Monday, Apr. 18, 1949
Big Rocks
One day last week, an armored car drew up before a six-story building on Manhattan's East 51st Street. Out stepped a mail carrier clutching a brown-wrapped package. Entering the building, he plunked the package on the reception desk of Jeweler Harry Winston.
Small (5 ft.), swarthy Harry Winston, one of the leading U.S. diamond dealers, thus took possession of his biggest buy this year -- the famed gem collection of Washington's onetime No. 1 hostess, the late Evalyn Walsh McLean. As usual, he had shipped it to himself by mail (postage: $159.87, including the cost of registering and insuring it).
For $1,100,000 plus, Winston got 74 brooches, necklaces, bracelets, and two world-famed diamonds, the robin's-egg-sized Hope diamond* (44 1/2 carats) and the Star of the East (100 carats). Though Winston laughed at the legend that the Hope diamond had brought only trouble or tragedy to its owners and wearers, he soon had his pressagents grinding out new embellishments of the tale (samples: "Marie Antoinette, who wore it, was beheaded . . . Solomon Habib, Oriental diamond merchant who handled the gem, has been ill for 40 years"). Winston planned to send the collection on a nationwide tour of museums and leading jewelry stores, then sell it.
Front Man. For almost 37 years, ever since he went to work in his father's Los Angeles jewelry store at 16, Harry Winston has suffered from what he calls "diamonditis." At 21, with $2,000 in his pockets, he came to Manhattan to buy & sell precious stones on his own.
Self-conscious because of his youth and size, Winston hired a distinguished-looking man of 70 to go around with him as a front for his deals. Before he was 34 he had bought & sold such famous collections as Empire-Builder Collis P. Huntington's and Mining Tycoon E. J. ("Lucky") Baldwin's. He also learned that gem buying could be tricky. Once he bought $90,000 worth which he later found had been taken from Socialite Mrs. Isaac Emerson, wife of the Bromo-Seltzer king. Winston had to return the lot.
Later, he bought the Jonker diamond, recognized as the world's fourth biggest uncut stone /- ; and the President Vargas, third biggest, and Venezuela's smaller Libertador. He paid $2,100,000 for the three, cut them into 45 smaller stones and sold the lot for nearly $4,000,000.
By Appointment Only. A big buyer of African stones, Winston now mines diamonds in Venezuela, employs 400 cutters and polishers in Amsterdam, New York City and Puerto Rico, grosses $20 million a year. In his Manhattan showrooms, browsing is not encouraged; jewels are usually shown only by appointment. The average sale: $5,000. Winston also turns out engagement rings which Montgomery Ward & Co., Inc. sells for as little as $37.50, and makes jewels for some 750 U.S. retail stores. Winston keeps track of every gem in his store at all times. If a single stone is mislaid, no one leaves at night until it is found. Winston himself has never been robbed. But he still follows his insurance brokers' advice and refuses to let newspapers and magazines snap his picture.
* So named for British Banker Henry Thomas Hope, who bought it in 1830 when it turned up in England after mysteriously disappearing from the French crown jewels.
/- The biggest: the 3,106-carat Cullinan.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.